Assassin’s Fate

‘We’re on the flat part. Then we come to a place where the floor slopes up. Then the long stairs. Then a small flat place and more stairs to the door. Did it … crush him?’

‘Bee,’ he said very softly.

‘He said he wouldn’t leave me again!’

He said nothing.

‘He can’t be dead!’ I wailed.

‘Bee. You know that he is.’

Did I? I felt for him, inside my mind. I lowered my walls and groped to where he had been. No Wolf Father. And the connection he had shared with me since he had touched my head … gone. ‘He’s dead.’

‘Yes.’

That was the most terrible word I had ever heard. I reached out and caught the sleeve of his shirt. I held to it and together we walked faster, as if we could run away from his death.

The floor had remained level but the water was getting deeper. We walked on through the blackness. Water sloshed around my chest. The floor began to slant upwards, but the water still became deeper.

‘Faster,’ he said, and I tried.

‘What’s going to become of me?’ I asked suddenly. It was a terrible, selfish question. My father was dead and I wanted to know what would happen to me?

‘I’ll take care of you. And the first thing I will do is get you out of here to the ship that will take us somewhere safe. And then I’ll get you home.’

‘Home,’ I said, but the word was hollow. What was home? ‘I want Per!’

‘We’re going to Per. Hurry.’ He halted, pulled his sleeve down over his hand, and then seized mine. He dragged me through the rising water, moving so quickly that my feet barely touched the floor. He stumbled when we came to the first shallow step, and we both fell in the water. But in a moment he was on his feet and we were climbing the steps, fleeing the water that seemed to be chasing us. The steps were unevenly spaced. I banged my ankles and tripped and hit my shins. He didn’t let go of my hand but dragged me relentlessly on. For a long time, we climbed steps, but the water got shallower very slowly.

‘Is that light?’ he asked suddenly.

I squinted. ‘Not daylight. It’s a lamp.’

‘I can see it.’ His voice trembled as if someone were shaking him. ‘Per? Lant?’

It was Lant. He came down the steps to us, holding the small lamp in one hand and his sword in the other. His face was a mask of light and shadow above it. ‘Bee? Fitz? Fool? Why were you so slow to follow? We feared the worst!’ He came sloshing toward us, talking as he came. ‘I feared you were trapped in the tunnel. Only a few more steps and you’ll be out of the water. Spark has not come back. She outran me. I came back in time to see Prilkop running away. I would have had to kill him to stop him. Per remains on guard at the door.’ His explanation rattled from his lips. Then, as his light reached us, ‘Where is Fitz?’

Fool took a breath. ‘Not with us,’ he said.

‘But …’ Lant stared at him and then looked down at me. I could not bear his expression. I hid my face in Beloved’s shirt. ‘No,’ Lant said on a hoarse exhalation Then, ‘How?’

‘There was an explosion. The beams of the tunnel came down. Fitz is gone, Lant.’

They were moving as they spoke climbing the steps slowly as if they carried something heavy between them. Lant stopped suddenly. The light wavered as his shoulder’s shook. He made a choking sound.

‘NO!’ Beloved said savagely. He grabbed his shoulder and shook him so that the lamp’s light danced. ‘No. Not here. Not now. Neither of us can feel that. When she is safe, we can grieve. For now, we plan and we survive. Swallow it, put your head up and walk on!’

Lant did. He took a noisy breath and then strode on. I walked between them and then behind them, trying to comprehend that my father was gone. Again. But he would not return this time. I recalled the dream of the scales. I had known, in some part of myself, that he might buy my life with his. But with every breath I exhaled, something inside me grew heavier. Guilt, fault, grief, or a terrible mixture of those things. I did not weep. Tears would have been too small, an insult to the size of loss I’d taken. I wanted to bleed my sorrow, to let the pain of it drain out with my life.

Lant suddenly glanced back at me. ‘Bee, I am so sorry.’

‘You didn’t kill him. He traded his life for mine.’

He stumbled slightly. Then he said, ‘Get up on my back, Bee. We will go faster.’

I thought of refusing, but I was so tired. He stooped and I climbed up. I put my arms around Lant’s neck, trying not to choke him. I wondered if the rising tide had filled the tunnel behind us. Would it slosh around my father’s body? Would little blind fishes come to eat him?

With me riding on Lant’s back, we went more quickly. The steps grew steeper and the water receded. Then, in the distance, I saw a very small light. It was bobbing as it came toward us. ‘Get down, Bee,’ Lant said in a low voice. I slid from his back and he stepped in front of Beloved and I, his sword ready.

But it was Spark with a brushwood torch. ‘I chased them through the bushes and down the hill, to the edge of the town. I couldn’t chase them through the streets with a sword. They got away. Where’s Prilkop?’